RETAIL
Fraspens planning AIM float
Chinese outdoor clothing brand Fraspens was set to announce yesterday its intention to float on London’s Alternate Investment Market (AIM), seeking to raise about £4 million (US$6.84 million), the Telegraph reported yesterday. The newspaper said Fraspens’ market value would rise to about £40 million on its flotation on AIM. Fraspens shares are expected to start trading next month, the report said. According to Euromonitor International, Fraspens is the third-biggest local outdoor clothing brand in China in terms of revenue. Fraspens could not be contacted for comment outside of normal business hours.
CONGLOMERATES
Philips Q2 profit slid 23%
Dutch electronics giant Philips NV yesterday reported a 23 percent slump in second-quarter net profit to 243 million euros (US$329 million). The Dutch giant said in a statement sales also dropped 5.4 percent to 5.3 billion euros. The group blamed weak performance by its new strategic activities in healthcare equipment for the slump in profits. Last year, Philips announced the sale of its lifestyle entertainment branch, which makes stereos and DVD players, after selling its troubled TV-making arm in 2012.
MACROECONOMICS
US hiring, wages up: NABE
Rising sales helped boost hiring and wages at US businesses in the second quarter, and companies are optimistic that the trends will continue this fall, a new survey by the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) showed. Fifty-seven percent of the 85 respondents to the quarterly survey said sales at their companies rose in the April-June period. Respondents also said the outlook for the July-October period is strong, with 59 percent of respondents expecting sales to increase during the third quarter. As sales picked up, so did hiring. Thirty-six percent of companies said they hired more workers during the second quarter, while the employment outlook was steady, with 37 percent of respondents expecting their companies to hire more workers in the July-October period.
ENERGY
Tullow shuts North Sea well
Oil and gas producer Tullow Oil PLC said it had plugged and abandoned a well in the Norwegian North Sea after it failed to find any hydrocarbons. The company said it did not encounter hydrocarbons in the Lupus exploration well, 35km southeast of the Oseberg South field in the North Sea. It was the first well in production license PL 507, Tullow said yesterday. Tullow reported a US$415 million pretax write-off in net exploration in the first half of the year due to dry holes drilled in Mauritania, Ethiopia and Norway over the past six months and various license cancellations.
METALS
Amplats mulls mine sale
Anglo American Platinum Ltd (Amplats), the world’s largest producer of the metal, said it may sell some mines after first-half profit dropped 88 percent because a five-month strike in South Africa disrupted mining. Amplats, as the Johannesburg-based unit of Anglo American PLC is known, is putting four mines and possibly two joint ventures up for sale, it said in a statement yesterday. It will retain the Mogalakwena open-cast operation, the company’s largest, three other mining assets and four stakes in joint ventures. Earnings per share excluding one-time items fell to 0.60 rand (US$0.06) in the six months, from 5.14 rand a year earlier, Amplats said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained